It is natural for bloggers who start to gather a following to consider revenue opportunities to reward their time and effort.

Google AdSense is a popular option for its plug and play nature. Sadly, it tends to be a disappointing source of income for most bloggers. The average RPM (revenue per thousand impressions of an ad) is fairly low in most niches, so you won’t get much side income from AdSense unless you have a very large audience. For example, if you average $3 RPM, you need a thousand visitors per day to pay for your daily latte (or more if you frequent Starbucks).

Bloggers who look around and explore their options a little more in-depth, may find the lucrative world of affiliate marketing. It’s a simple idea really. Imagine that I create a product and then want you to help me sell as many of it as possible. You, the affiliate, will promote the product for me through your blog. When a sale is made thanks to you (we’ll track that through a special link and browser cookies), I’ll give a portion of that sale to you. The percentage varies but it can be very high, with 50% being the norm for digital products.

If you are unscrupulous you could promote all sort of junk to make a buck, whether you honestly think it’s worth recommending or not. You could even promote products that you down right know suck, and still get your cut. And it turns out people actually do just this. As a result, affiliate marketers have a very bad reputation, despite there being nothing inherently wrong with receiving money for providing a marketing service.

Amazon Associates was one of the earliest and, currently, largest affiliate programs around. The operating margins are much smaller for Amazon, so the percentage that you get for each sale is rather small compared to that of most products online. We’re talking about 4-8.50% for most items, instead of the 50-75% you’d get from other digital products you could be promoting. Furthermore, with Amazon you don’t generally receive recurring referral revenue like you do with other digital products that charge a monthly fee and not a one-off fee.

Amazon’s operating agreement also requires you to be above-board when it comes to the way you go about promoting their products. Other affiliate programs online may gladly close one eye on your techniques if you are moving sales and making them money.

To further make Amazon less appealing to some affiliates, the referral cookie only lasts 24 hours, versus 30 or 60 days, which is common for online sales of digital products. This means that if you refer someone to Amazon.com today, and they were to buy a product three days from now, you won’t be getting anything at all. With more common affiliate relationships, you’d be getting a cut even if the user were to make a purchasing decision a month and a half after the first visit you generated (assuming that they didn’t clear their cookies, that is).

As a result, Amazon Associates is often ignored or berated by large affiliates. In fact it’s even a much underrated revenue option among bloggers. Amazon, and not AdSense, should be the first go-to option for bloggers looking to earn some money from their blogs. Amazon Associates is, and has been for years now, my number one source of blogging income.

To make this case, below I list a series of reasons why I recommend giving Amazon Associates a serious shot, despite its shortcomings.

Reason #1: Amazon Associates is straightforward and dependable

Once you sign up and provide the details of how you’d like to be paid (cheque, direct deposit, or gift certificate) you’ll receive your payments once you’ve reached or crossed the pre-established threshold limit (e.g., $100, with a two month delay for the payment). If you move enough sales, after two months, you’ll be receiving a steady monthly paycheck from them.

Other affiliate programs can make you jump through hoops to sign up and get approved, or may require certain conditions to be met before issuing payments (e.g., ClickBank’s requirement for five different credit card purchases before releasing the funds, which progressively reduces the amount that you’re owed over time until you get those five separate credit card payments).

Reason #2: Amazon’s cookie has site-wide coverage, and is not just limited to a specific product

Yes, you only get a 24-hour window, but in that timeframe you’ll get a cut of anything a referred visitor buys, not just the product you pointed out to them. I’ve had visitors buy all sorts of expensive and odd items when they left my site to check out a $10 book on Amazon. And trust me, pink vibrators can add up quickly. 🙂

You don’t have to promote “belly fat secrets” on your blog to make a buck. Their huge selection of high-quality books and other products, means that you can be selective and only recommend or point out items you truly believe are worth your readers’ time and investment. You can select books that are entirely relevant to your topic of expertise, and review products you have actually read/tried/consumed.

Reason #4: People trust Amazon

Being such a well established household name implies that most of your visitors won’t think twice about putting a purchase through on Amazon. Many will have accounts already, and perhaps even have their credit card stored on the site for quick checkouts. This in turn means that more people will buy instead of second guessing whether it’s safe to use the shopping cart.

Reason #5: Amazon is a master at converting visitors into customers

Amazon spends millions of dollars in research to optimize the amount of sales they squeeze out of new and existing customers. All you really need to do is send people to Amazon and they’ll do a good job themselves for the most part. Of course, if you are considered a trustworthy expert in your field and you send people to Amazon to check out a specific item, your conversion rate will be even higher.

Reason #6: The percentage of your cut raises in a given month, as you sell more items

The more products you sell, the greater the percentage of your total sales will be awarded to you. You start at a very low 4%, but can reach the 8% range in a relatively short amount of time (if your sales are good).

I strongly encourage you to give Amazon Associates a go.

Update: Several people wrote me asking for further details on how to make money with the Amazon Associates program. I’ll repeat here what I suggested privately via email:

In my book on technical blogging, I go in-depth about techniques that can help ensure that you get most out of this program (including statistics about my income, if you need further guidance to maximize your own earnings).

The Easy Azon plugin is super-handy and a time saver if you plan to feature Amazon links in your WordPress-based blog or site.

Antonio Cangiano is a Software Developer and Technical Evangelist for IBM, as well as a web entrepreneur, serial blogger, and published author. He makes extra income blogging in his spare time about technical topics. He authored a definitive blogging book published by The Pragmatic Bookshelf.

Comments

Totally agree, but wanted to point out that you should probably not be using Amazon’s affiliate program directly. As you can see on the commission table above, only the big guys get the best rates. Instead, use something like VigLink, where your site is grouped together with others, bumping you straight up to the higher commission bracket. VigLink takes a cut, but you still make more unless your site was already really big.

VigLink gets a 25% commission. That means that your effective commission rate is 0.75*8.5% = 6.37%. If you can sell 31 items a month, so one item per day, you are better off as a direct affiliate for Amazon. Of course, VigLink can have other advantages like the integration with other programs, the convenience factor, etc.

Totally agree. I put amazon on my site as an experiment to begin with and didn’t push it too hard. After considering getting rid of it I checked my balance and found I had actually made a little money. Recently I’ve been putting more links to them in the text if there’s an appropriate segway. I think that’s a good resource for your readers and has actually started to add up.

I wonder though, have you played with the “astore”? I just wonder how the 24 hour referral fee works with that…

During my, admittedly limited, experimentation with astore, I have not found it to be particularly lucrative. Your mileage may vary. For the cookie, I believe it’s set when you click on a product within the astore, and not just when the astore is loaded.

Hi Antonio, what do you think of affiliate networks like Commission Junction? Admittedly, I’ve had better results with Amazon than affiliate networks like CJ and ShareASale. I’m not sure if this is due to the trust factor; visitors prefer to buy from Amazon than other lesser know networks.

I’m however, interested to know your experiences (or any other commenter’s views).

Hey,
Thanks for the info. I came here when I saw an ad on facebook. Since I don’t believe everything I investigated and am very impressed with your knowledge and explanation. Thank you for the easy-to-read, reveal-all report.

I’ve been having this problem. My dad is using my banner ad on my site to do Christmas shopping and even when it comes up as an order in my Amazon central (which it doesn’t always do) I never get any comission from his orders!

There is a ban on family and friends ordering and getting an extra discount (the commission). I had a friend overseas do a test order for me to see if the thing was set up properly and they axed my payment as they said she didn’t qualify. He could shop using our Jodi & Neil Portal website though. HaHa!!!!
Seriously, they picked up the same IP address. Order off a different computer somewhere else, under a false name, using a stolen credit card under the cover of darkness. Might fool em. Doubt it though. Get a friend to do the order?

I don’t get it – How would Amazon know your friend overseas is somehow connected to you? I’m not sure Amazon drill down to this depth. But if it were affecting purchases (ie. from the same IP), you can just use a proxy. Amazon make enough anyway, they’re not going to be sore over losing 5% here and there.

When compared to other online retailers, Amazon generally has the lowest price on a given items. So if you are promoting a specific product to your readers, do them the favor of linking to the best price – even if you would get a higher commission selling it elsewhere. Your readers will appreciate it, and this is how you add value for your readers – and ultimately get the sale.

To ChrisJJ above, I have never had a problem with not getting a sale from Amazon.com that I know was made (via my own tests or friends and family). On the other hand, I have had lost sales with other affiliate programs run on other networks. When I am looking for a link to a product – no matter what it is – I always check Amazon first.

Thank you for your insight. I’ve been debating between Amazon and Google for my site. I know I can use both, but I wanted my website to be very clean and easy, rather than an obvious attempt to get people to buy things I recommend.

I’ve gone with the Amazon Carousel widget in Ferris Wheel mode and it looks great. Plus, since my website is centered on personal development, I can keep all my recommendations in that realm. On a previous blog of mine, I became upset at all the ads Google put up for “meet Hot Women in Ukraine” and similar themes. It was a personal blogs about my travels across Europe!

Thank you again for your feedback on the programs and helping me cement my decision to use Amazon.

It’s funny, I was just talking to a friend about this. She didn’t care to use Amazon as one of her affiliate programs for her career blog and I completely disagreed. I’ve always used Amazon due to the wide array of products I can promote and how easy it is for me to use it. I think she is cheating herself out of extra money for sure. Good points on this article for sure.

I received a call today asking if I was interested in making money from home and was introduced to the term “Amazon Associate”. We didn’t get too far into the call however. The gentlemen on the phone asked if I was interested in making money at home — of course I am. Then he asked if I had about $200 I could invest right away. I said I didn’t have the funds immediately but wanted to hear more so if it was something I was interested in I could potentially find a way to scrape it together. I am a single mom and $200 is a lot of money. The minute he heard “I don’t have it today”, however, he hung up on me. So my question is…. is this a scam or a serious opportunity and why do I have to pay money to get it started?

getting started with Amazon Associates costs nothing. The call was a scam or someone trying to sell you some expensive course. Steer clear of such cold calling.

All the information you need to get started is available for free online in blog posts like mine. If you’d like a more structured approach to succeeding with blogging and earning extra income from it, I suggest you get my book or another blogging book. It’s going to be a lot cheaper than your typical course with disputable credentials.

Great article! I have been an Amazon Associate for awhile now and have made some money. Although it’s not a huge amount, I still enjoy the ease of use and the fact that I actually see the money. The one thing I don’t like is the fact I can not place my Amazon links in my YouTube videos. I have to link back to my site, then to Amazon. That’s one extra step for the customer and I believe I am not making as many sales as I would if they allowed that. I don’t really have blogs out there, so I am assuming I would make more money if I did. One day I had a sale that made me $89 in commission. I believe it was a teacher that made the purchase because they were all school books. It does work people, so give it a shot.

Thank you so much for such an informative article, since I am fairly new at blogging and on a tight budget at this time your information is appreciated, thanks again. How much advertising do you have on your blogs?

I think it’s important to use both-Adsense/alternatives are great for a little spending money, and Amazon can be a little bit better for those larger expenses. This is when you have made the full time leap towards actually blogging more full time and have established yourself like you wanted.

Thanks a lot for this post and this website as well! I came to this site after seeing ember crooks presentation on benefits of technical blogging in DB2 got talent. I am now motivated to put my leanings into a blog and start earning a little income from it.
Thanks!

Hi Antonio, Nice post you got here and makes me wanna stay longer with Amazon as an associate. lol. Seriously, I’ve been with Amazon for only about two months now so I am not yet ready to give it up. I’ll wait for another four months may be to make it a total of six months for a longer experience and then I will write a review about it.

Reason why I’m thinking of giving up is because I have not experienced even a single sale yet. It could be because my site niche is something not for the American audience that’s why so I’m thinking of publishing another website this time centered on the US audience. By the way, can you write about the countries where Amazon is doing really good aside from USA, Australia and Canada?

Thanks for the great info. I currently use Google adsense but using Amazon as well just makes great sense. Especially since Amazon is where I make over 90% of my own online purchases. It’s a no-brainer!

while it was quite easy to become an amazon affiliate a few years ago, it seems that now they refuse most of the applications. My affiliate account on amazon.co.jp (Japan) has been closed because of allegedly misbehaviour in the way I linked to amazon and now I am not able to apply anymore (tried with different names, different websites, different email address). Have had similar experiences.

Thank you very much for this write-up, which I just found today. I have a question, but I understand if it doesn’t get answered since I am rather late to the discussion. My question is from the perspective of a customer using Amazon, rather than a web site owner considering the affiliate program:

Suppose that I am shopping on Amazon, and I put several items in my cart. Then I remember that I wanted to go to the web site of a non-profit organization that I support, and use their Amazon affiliate link to make my purchase, so that that non-profit org will get a percentage of my Amazon purchase. So I go to the non-profit site, I click on their Amazon link, maybe I put another item or two in my Amazon cart, and I proceed with my purchase. Question: Does the non-profit Amazon affiliate site receive a percentage from Amazon on every item I purchased, even ones that were already in my cart before I clicked over? Or do they get a cut of only those items that I added to my cart after I clicked over?

This is what usually happens to me when I shop at Amazon, because I rarely remember to use the non-profit org’s affiliate link until I am almost done making my selections. So I just wonder if I am really helping them, or not.

Great article! Thanks for sharing. Another point to mention that makes Amazon so great is that the tools offered to help you sell are fantastic. Whether it is text links, image links, or complete text/image links as well as comparison tools etc. My site compares a range of products and even though there is a lot of unique content in supporting articles, the main page of the site is the comparison tool with review info from Amazon. For the negatives associated with lower commissions and short cookie life (btw if someone puts a product in their shopping cart this cookie life extends greatly) I think the positives of trust for buyers, upsell for additional products (i.e. a lot of people will buy more items in order to get free shipping) and ease of use- Amazon is a winner in my books.

Thank you so much for such an informative article, since I am fairly new at blogging and on a tight budget at this time your information is appreciated, thanks again. How much advertising do you have on your blogs?

Quite an informative article! Amazon’s affiliate program is actually one of the best and kickstarted affiliate programs in quite a few places around the world(India). The way it is explained on the website is quite elaborate & is surely a recommended option for if one wants to have quick earnings!

This is really a great summary. I’ve recently started using Amazon Affiliate program before a few days and yet to see products sold. This article inspires me, do you also put your learning along the way and monthly amazon earning on this blog? May be I missed seeing on your blog, if it’s already there?

Hi Antonio,
I’ve been trying to join the Amazon affiliates-Japan but can’t for the life of me find the translated page for joining. Are you a member of that particular Amazon? and if so can you direct me to a translated page for joining? I want to join the China Amazon as well and have the same problem. BTW I am using EasyAzon for link localization.

I totally agree.
I have sites with Clickbank links but they just don’t convert like Amazon affiliate links do.
People complain that Amazon affiliate rate is low, but the conversion makes up for it for sure!

i have a question about Amazon Associates: There’s a website for a non-profit that i’m volunteering for, and we put an Associates link for people to click through to Amazon’s home page. Recently, I found that many sales from this link were not rewarded any commission. i’m pretty sure that the purchases i myself made were done within a very short time. i haven’t found any info on the web regarding this issue. Does anyone know why that happened?

Celia, there are many reasons why one wouldn’t get commission if they order from the associates account from people.Some of them are if the purchase was made from a computer that was used to log in to the account, if the order was sent to the same address, if the order was processed with a card that’s account is linked to the same address, if the item gets shipped to the same address as the associates account holders, I mean there’s several ways Amazon tracks to make sure you ain’t “cheating” but another one I recently heard is that if someone goes to your page and doesn’t order within 24 hours from checking the site out.I think that last reason is kinda dumb because there’s several people, I included, that will look at a site or a few before determining which one I want to buy an item from.If anything I would call Amazon myself.They have a contact number for associates to reach them and ask questions.Give them a call and ask why that happened.

This is very interesting. My site is about a year old. Would this be old enough to start advertising with Amazon? What are your thoughts. Not sure if my readers would buy–would there be a penalty or fee if they did not?

One thing I would like to mention, I loved the point – “You don’t have to promote “belly fat secrets” on your blog to make a buck. ” Haha.. Seriously it is disgusting. I started with one of the affiliate programs, that made my website, a tummy trimming blog..I immediately dropped it out. Well thank you, for the guide. I was in confusion and my confusion got resolved here.

I’ve been using the Amazon Associates program for a little while now and it does actually work.I’ve had several orders and made a little bit of good money but nothing spectacular so far but it’s enough to do a few things with.One of the things I found to be very useful with this program is to create a Twitter account and use social media to get more people to check out your site and let them know about what it is you’re actually doing because then they will check it out and might be interested in joining the program as well or just interested in ordering a few products.I had a few customers message me on twitter and tell me they ordered some things so that was cool so it can definitely turn into something bigger easily with the right marketing strategy or promoting.Good article and thanks

Great article, a few years old now but still relevant. I’ve just started my own blog and am trying both Ad sense and Amazon. Quick question though, is the aStore actually worth it? I’ve done it as embedded into a page of my blog but I just don’t think it looks right and that widgets or relevant text links within the article might be a better way to go (using the nofollow ref so not to affect google ranking) – what do you think – aStore or just links / widgets? Thanks.

I’m just doing my research in order to get started as an affiliate and I find this article very useful. It makes perfect sense, even to a beginner like me! I’ll take your advice and go with the Amazon Affiliate program. It may not have the commission Click Bank offers, but I believe in smaller steady income that adds up rather than one big shot now and then. Or maybe I’ll go for both. Thanks again! I’ll definitely check out your video and book.

Great post!!
I was wondering – I have a couple of friends who love shopping on Amazon, and I sent them the link to my new astore. Is there a problem for them to do all their shopping via my affiliate link? Is there a maximum that Amazon allows? Is it ok if they don’t actually go through my blog, but directly to the astore?
Thanks in advance.

That is, if they actually pay you. I’ve had several sales over the past few months. Amazon arbitrarily decided that I knew these customers and/or had made the purchases myself (evidence of which is not provided as they simply claim the criteria they use is proprietary and will not be disclosed) and have refused to pay me as an affiliate. They are wrong in their accusations, but, of course, with the system they have set up they do not have to prove it or even disclose any information. They just accept the sale and keep the full profit for themselves. Apparently having repeat customers through a blog who wish to help support a blog/writer (I blog under my pen name) is the enough for them to rip off said writer and crap on their efforts.

I have just had this same experience. Friends and adult family were trying to support me by purchasing through my link rather than go to brick and mortar stores..only for me to get ZERO credit. I convinced my adult son to purchase $2700 in computer equipment through me and Amazon. I got NOTHING.

Hey Antonio. Great stuff. Quick question for ya. I am thinking of creating a site for a particular niche product, and affiliate it with Amazon. I want to invest heavily into SEO, $2000-$3000 over 3-4 months (using Posirank) to help get high PR backlinks 4+, press releases, blog posts. Do you think it would be worth it to heavily invest into the SEO like this? Obviously expectations on return are down the line, but long term is this a decent strategy in combination with affiliation with Amazon?

Personally, I am not having much luck with Amazon affiliate yet. I have recently launched an authority review site in the Smart Home Automation niche. Despite driving good amount of targeted PPC traffic to the site for each of the individual products I am yet to see any of them convert once they go through to Amazon. I do have excellent CTR for the ads for some very direct keywords e.g. “the product review”. The customers even spend some good amount of time in the site and also clicks through to other pages as I can gather from the tracking codes. The landing page conversion isn’t that bad either. But, once they go to Amazon it’s like they are going into a blackhole. Still puzzled to be honest.

I signed up as an Amazon affiliate about 3 weeks ago. I got my first sale on Wednesday, 3/9. I clicked on my earning statement and saw what was purchased. Today, I get an email from Amazon that says I was not approved as an Associate (I’m assuming this is the same thing as an Affiliate). I log back into my Amazon account and click on earnings statement and I get a little popup that says I am not an affiliate with this email account (this is the same email they sent my notice to). So basically, I feel that they didn’t approve me once I got them some sales. Really frustrated with Amazon right now. Not sure I would recommend to anyone!

So good, I just linked to this article on my latest blog post (Something, I do not take lightly), because I thought it was worthwhile sharing with my clients, mastermind group members, and visitors. Unfortunately, because I am living in Louisiana, I can no longer be involved in the amazon associates referral program, and they owe me around $100.00 that I believe I won’t ever see, unless some laws change or I move states. I still don’t understand why that law went into effect and really what it was supposed to accomplish.

Oh well, thanks again. I will be back shortly, to discuss a possible venture with TechnicalBlogging.com and my company at FeedtheBeastAlways.com, since we both provide similar content, services, consulting, and I know for a fact, could both mutually benefit from a strategical alliance.

Amazon associates is not a good program to promote! My account was closed accusing me of bidding on amazon and kindle related keywords when 1. I don’t even buy any search ads, all my traffic is organic and 2. I don’t even sell products even remotely related to those phrases.

They have no appeal process, nobody to contact, and their decision is final. As a result I no longer send them the 50 sales a month I was, and I closed my personal prime account and store card that I spent 10k+ a year on. Fuck amazonassociates!

One thing I would wish to mention, I loved the purpose – “You don’t ought to promote “belly fat secrets” on your blog to form a buck. ” Haha. Seriously it is disgusting. I started with one of the affiliate programs, that made my website, a tummy trimming blog..I immediately born it out. Well, thank you, for the guide. I was in confusion and my confusion got resolved here.

You explore a nice post about amazon affiliate. Though It’s make a little payment in comparison with other’s.
I think it’s easy to run. though payment is little. However in the long run the result is more.
Thanks for the post.

I never thought of affiliate marketing so deeply before. I used to promote domain registrars and similar digital products. But after reading this post, I can’t wait to enter the Amazon affiliate marketing arena.

Thank you for the awesome blog post. Keep posting such useful and informative stuff. 😀

Do you really believe this statement – “but can reach the 8% range in a relatively short amount of time (if your sales are good).” You mean to tell me that you think it’s easy for most people to make over 630 sales in one month? I think, for most people, that’s a little bit unrealistic.

This post is very useful for those, especially who want to earn Online Money.

In my opinion Amazon Associates Program is the best idea to Join, as soon as one has a Blog or Website to Monetize with its Affiliate Links.

Even when the Blog is just new, still someone can get some sales, because the visitor is ready to Buy, but not all the time, couple of times.

I’m Making around $ 1000 US Monthly and sometimes in Holidays a lot More from my one Blog(Ease Bedding Dot Com) with only one way until now and that is Amazon Associate Program.
I don’t like Adsense at all, because ads make your site look spammy and for Affiliate Links, its up to you, you can either use banners or text links.

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